Linkspam

[white_hart]

Enchanted forests: the women shaking up nature writing - I enjoy reading about nature and landscape but struggle to find diverse voices in the genre, so it's good to read about how the Forestry Commission's 2019 writers in residence are bringing some welcome diversity to a genre that is overwhelmingly white and male.

The Dead, In Their Uncontrollable Power, by Karen Osbourne - a fabulous story about entrenched inequality and having the courage to change things.

White Hart, Black Knight, by Alex Bledsoe - I clicked through to read this because of the name, but really enjoyed its noirish take on Arthurian fantasy, with better gender politics.

Confronting racism is not about the needs and feelings of white people - this is a really good article about anti-racism and why it needs to be centred on the voices and experiences of people of colour, not white allies.

The Day the Dinosaurs Died - a fascinating piece about the asteroid strike that marks the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene eras, and an paleontological find so extraordinary I find it hard to believe it can really be true.

Deborah Cameron on women and humour and prejudice against women who use humour in the workplace - I found this particularly interesting as humour is an absolutely integral part of how I communicate, and I find it almost impossible not to try to be funny, whether or not that makes people view me more negatively.

Opening the Edgeworth Papers - a year-long project looking at correspondence and other material from 200 years ago begins with Maria Edgeworth's attitudes to love and marriage, which may be of particular interest to admirers of the_comfortable_courtesan.

Reclaiming the Manic Pixie Dream Girl - as someone who always identified much more with the Manic Pixie Dream Girl characters than with the more traditional female love interests, I was interested in this look at how the MPDG could be reframed in a more positive light.

I am not always very attached to being alive - on living with passive suicidal ideation.

...for me, and I suspect for countless others like me, the threat of suicide isn't like being carried over a waterfall — it is like living in the ocean. Not as sea creatures do, native and equipped with feathery gills to dissolve oxygen for my bloodstream, but alone, with an expanse of water at all sides. Some days are unremarkable, floating under clear skies and smooth waters; other days are tumultuous storms you don’t know you’ll survive, but you’re always, always in the ocean.

This is the ocean I live in, too.

'Underwear dates well': how fashion forensics are helping solve crimes - I was hugely impressed with Amber Butchart's TV series A Stitch in Time last year, and loved this piece on how she is using her knowledge of fashion history to help crime scene investigators to date bodies.

'It is a religion': how the world went mad for Moomins - a lovely article about Tove Jansson's Moomin series and the forthcoming TV series (which I will definitely be watching!).

Comments

[cmcmck]

That's true of allies for any other persecuted group too!

[white_hart]

Indeed!

[perennialanna]

I cheered at the line about nature reserves being pretty much impossible to get to if you use public transport.

Though I have had some glorious wildlife spots on my daily way between schools - four jays flying across the patch of green known as the Old Railway, a week ago. Plus some favourite badger setts spotted from the top deck of the bus. If I wasn't a working single mother and therefore prone to falling asleep if I sit down after 8 in the evening, I would like to write about the way nature weaves its way into urban gaps and fragments of time (and does not require a bivvy bag and a trip up a remote mountain).

[white_hart]

Alas, too true. The main reason I continue to have a car is that it makes walking much easier when you don't have several days available to walk into the wilderness. (The Guardian also has this article today, about getting to national parks by public transport, which might be of interest.)

The thing I most liked about Robert Macfarlane's The Wild Places is that he starts off with grand, remote places but ends by finding small bits of wildness in the everyday, mostly-built-or-cultivated world.

here from network

[kore]

These are fantastic - thank you. I thought that article about suicidal ideation was great, too.

Re: here from network

[white_hart]

It seems to have struck a chord for a lot of people.

Re: here from network

[kore]

Yeah, like with a lot of problems/difficulties, it's much easier to see and treat -- and manage -- the acute rather than the chronic. Of course by the time a condition is acute, the danger and the expense and often the shame factor are also all way up there....

I've had a lot of friends say they don't want to die, or (explicit method), they just want to "Not be here."

Re: here from network

[white_hart]

Yes; I have had moments of feeling actively suicidal, but the persistent feeling that I would like to just stop existing is much more familiar.